


Reminiscence

by apfelgranate



Series: Young Fen'Harel AU [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Badly Researched Seduction Attempts, Demisexual Solas, F/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelgranate/pseuds/apfelgranate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do you think you’re doing,” Saar says.</p>
<p>On her bed, Fen’Harel straightens from where he has been positively <i>lounging</i> like a decadent, pampered cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reminiscence

**Author's Note:**

> This is a snippet from a larger AU I've been brainstorming for some time, but I doubt I'll have the time to write a long fic for it, so currently there's only this fic and [these](http://apfelgranate.tumblr.com/post/112921690514/old-habits-die-hard-i-e-fenharel-would-also-be) [pieces](http://apfelgranate.tumblr.com/post/116317933119/ive-had-this-lying-around-90-done-for-weeks-and) I've done previously. 
> 
> Basically all you need to know is that Solas disappears just as in canon, and a few months later (a very young) Fen'Harel shows up in present-day Thedas due to some timey-wimey thing and the Inquisition finds him.

It’s surreal.

That’s the best word Saar can come up with, even though considering what her life has involved in the past three years, it’s lost some of its impact.

“What do you think you’re doing,” she says.

On her bed, Fen’Harel straightens from where he has been positively _lounging_ like a decadent, pampered cat. He’s wearing one of her jackets, the one made of wool-silk jacquard, midnight blue woven with subtle patterns and red stitching at the seams and borders. It had been expensive. It had looked amazing on Solas.

_Looks good on this one too_ , a voice in the back of her mind whispers.

She closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose with two fingers, and sighs.

“I gave you leave to roam Skyhold, not to root through _my things_. Take that off and put it back where you found—”

She breaks off when he swings his legs over the edge of her bed; the skin is bare all the way up his thighs to where the jacket ends and his chest is bare as well, where the jacket gapes open. He’s not wearing anything underneath it. _Of course he isn’t_. More and more often these days, Saar thinks that when Solas had said that he was cocky and hot-blooded in his youth, he was being _quite_ charitable.

“Forget it,” she mutters. “Just leave it on.”

Fen’Harel smiles innocently and drops his hands from the sash that is holding the jacket closed.

“You seem fickle today,” he muses in Elvish. “Of two minds. Are you troubled, dragonborn?”

“I’m the Inquisitor, being troubled’s part of the job,” she replies in common, not in the mood to indulge him, even though by now she can hold a pretty decent conversation in Elvish. That’s the one unequivocally good thing to come out of this mess: In the four months Fen’Harel has spent at Skyhold, her grasp of the elven language has improved drastically.

“What are you doing here?” she repeats. “I’m not gonna ask a third time, so if you don’t want to be thrown off the balcony, get talking.”

“Is it not obvious? According to the current literature Dorian was so kind to procure for me, this is quite clear.” He’s switched back to common, but right now Saar is not inclined to count that in his benefit. He slips off the bed and ambles closer, hands folded in the small of his back, and she resolutely does _not_ look at the way the muscles in his thighs shift with his movements. She also doesn’t think about the fact that apparently, Solas managed to keep this habit through millennia; one foot slid in front of the other like a wolf, the sway in the shoulders and hips, the slow smile.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Seeker Cassandra did say you were a woman of clear words,” he murmurs. Saar just lifts an eyebrow at him, waiting.

“I’m seducing you.”

She blinks.

“...What.”

“I am seducing you,” he repeats, shifting one thigh forward so there’s even less fabric covering it and she’s not looking at it, she’s not imagining what her hand would look like sliding between his legs, how hot his skin would be, she is _not_ —

She curses under her breath and drags a hand across her eyes.

“Tell Dorian he needs to find you some better books,” she says and brushes past him. Her desk is a mess; she’s been meaning to tidy it for ages. Unfortunately, the cold shoulder approach rarely works on Fen’Harel. Telling him to fuck off and make himself useful or she’ll set his hair on fire usually does the trick, even if she doubts that she’d actually manage it.

“He was rather vocal about the fact that your library is incredibly lacking,” he comments, his voice drifting closer while she shuffles papers around on her desk. Suddenly warmth radiates from beside her.

“If you wish me to leave, tell me,” he says, in Elvish this time, voice curling gentle and husky around the words.

And that right there is the problem, isn’t it.

Ten months ago, Solas had disappeared after she had killed Corypheus. When she finds him, she’s going to punch him in his blighted lying face and demand some very extensive answers about a certain orb and just _how_ it wound up in the hand of an ancient Tevinter magister, but still… She misses him. She misses his dry humor and his warm hands and his smile and his tales of the Fade and the way his breathing changed when she kissed him.

Four months ago, she thought she had finally caught up to him. But instead she found this: The cocky elven god version of Solas from at least two thousand years ago who got transported to this time by some weird convoluted time magic no one’s been able to figure out yet. Who wears Solas’ face, though younger and less weary; whose voice sounds like Solas’ did, if slightly higher; who often walks and sometimes talks like Solas; who looks at her as though she is the pivotal point of this strange world he doesn’t know.

But Solas wasn’t…

“You don’t know me,” she says, hoping against hope the note of desperation in her voice is merely her imagination.

“I know enough.”

She turns to him. “Is this a game to you?” she bites out. “Having some fun with the strange mortals before you return home?”

“We can make a game of it, if you wish.”

With a dull _thud_ , Saar drops the stack of papers and letters she had been holding on the desk and stalks off towards the balcony doors, just in case she decides to make good on her threat. She’s not _fleeing_ , she’s just…

_Dammit_.

Fen’Harel follows her at two arm lengths’ distance, undeterred, but at least he makes no move to invade her space.

“I know the look in your eyes, dragonborn. Why should we not enjoy each other’s… _company_ , while the opportunity exists?”

There’s something awful about the way he says _dragonborn_ – always in Elvish, even when he speaks common – it sounds like an endearment. It sounds like when Solas called her _vhenan_ , and it does terrible things to her heartbeat.

“Are you concerned for your reputation? I hear many of these humans have strange notions about that sort of thing.”

She whips around.

“You don’t know me,” she repeats, dangerously low. “So don’t pretend to care for me. You don’t love me, you don’t want me, and I’m fairly certain you like _aggravating_ _me_ far more than you actually like _me_.”

“Why does it matter whether I love you or not for me to desire you?”

“Because you don’t fucking _work_ like that—”

She breaks off. Fen’Harel’s smile sharpens, then disappears in increments, and Saar wishes desperately that she had access to Alexius’ damn time magic to take back the last ten seconds.

“'I do not work like that'? Say, how would you know this of me?”

_Get out_ rests on the tip of her tongue, but the damage is done already, and her mouth is desert-dry and sticks closed.

“Did you truly believe I would not find out?” he asks, and she can’t read his tone at all. “They talk. Gossip. Your soldiers and merchants and workers. You had a lover, they say. An elven mage, who disappeared, who had my face. I am _very_ partial to this body.”

Saar says nothing.

He watches her in silence, head tilted to the side. The sunlight falling through the stained glass-windows paints colorful patterns on his skin. It makes it seem like his tattoos move, coming alive. They cover near every part of his body except for his face and throat, curved lines and curls and dots that build abstract shapes. At least when seen from up close, from afar they turn into animal contours, a wolf’s head over his chest, claws on his wrists and ankles. When he works magic, they light up with a soft red glow. She’s pretty sure it’s not actually how his body works, but because he likes showing off. Nonetheless, her gaze gets caught tracing along the center line of his chest downwards, and down, and _down_ …

“What would you do if I said yes?”

He shrugs. “I’ve heard the stories. I knew I… he likely still lives. Did you think I would run off to meet myself if you told me? _You_ are far more interesting than to whatever frail old man I have withered.”

Saar lets out a heavy breath and leans back against the balcony doors. She knows exactly what had worried her, and it was not what Fen’Harel would do if he knew; it was what _Solas_ would do should he find out. This Fen’Harel seems _young_ , far younger than the one who decided to lock away his brethren to save the elvhen people. She’d asked him about Arlathan plenty of times, and never had his replies struck her as those of a budding revolutionary.

“He—wasn’t that old,” she says. “Didn’t look like it, anyway.”

“You _were_ lovers,” Fen’Harel says, no little amount of triumph in his voice. She snorts and rolls her eyes.

“Yeah. Satisfied? You can stop with _this_ now.” She gestures at him and his near-nakedness. He makes no move to cover himself again, merely frowns at her.

“I was wholly serious,” he says eventually. “I _am_ serious. I want to ruin the bed with you.”

Saar stares at him, opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again.

“ _Why_?”

He laughs, a light, careless thing. So unlike the way Solas laughed.

“I may not be the man you loved yet,” he says, “but why he loves you – _that_ I understand very well.”

That’s—

Well—

“Andraste’s flaming knickers,” Saar grunts and covers her eyes with one hand. Her face is burning up. _This is a terrible idea_ , she thinks. Her mouth however, doesn’t listen.

“What makes you even think we—we’d have,” she waves vaguely with one hand, “good sex? You don’t even know what I enjoy. And no matter what _he_ likes, it’s been thousands of years.”

“Oh, Saar,” Fen’Harel whispers and shifts close and closer – but not close enough to touch. “Don’t tell me you have never dreamed of subjugating a god, hm?”

She blinks. She swallows. She’s definitely thinking about it _now_.

“Tell me what you want,” he says softly, and he’s _glowing_ : Light dances along the lines of his tattoos, the warmth of his body, the shiver of magic fills the air between them. The way he’s looking up at her is so familiar it’s eerie. The subtle half-smile, the cheeky glint in his eyes, hands folded in the small of his back, chin up and chest out, the way anticipation wafts off his entire posture. Saar is quiet for a long time, looking at him. Then, she nudges one finger against the seam of the jacket.

“Take that off.”


End file.
